


the other half of his life

by Deputychairman



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: But he makes it work, F/M, I love you but I'm actually quite busy running this castle?, Jaskier's love life is complicated, M/M, POV Outsider, and no I'm not addressing you by your stage name you're called Julian, and says yes darling i did know you were sleeping with him, but Jaskier's just A Lot, what if she's an actual grownup who rolls her eyes, what if the Countess de Stael is actually really cool, when your ex meets your other ex you got back together with when he broke up with you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24631756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/pseuds/Deputychairman
Summary: The man she recognised right away.He was dirty and his clothes were ragged, but he still had that overwhelming physical presence she remembered. The witcher, Julian’s other muse from the other half of his life, here in her castle.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion/Countess de Stael
Comments: 96
Kudos: 971





	the other half of his life

Rosalind became the Countess de Stael when she was nineteen years old, and even then she knew she’d been lucky.

Her husband Count Alexander de Stael brought the ancient title to their union while Rosalind brought the money, and it was a great leveller, as money tends to be. That was the first way she was lucky. She was lucky in her husband, too, in the kind of man he was and the sort of respectful partnership he was willing to make with her. They weren’t in love or anything like that, but over 25 years running the estate with him, they came to be confidants, trusted colleagues, honest advisors and quite successful parents. Four of their five children still lived, anyway. She might even have called them friends, had they not been married.

Julian wrote a vicious little song about him once, when her official commitments as Countess dragged her out of his bed too soon, and she refused to see him again until he followed it up with a companion piece at his own expense. Alexander gave her exquisite freedom to entertain any lovers she wished, and she would not repay him with slander and innuendo. He _could_ satisfy a woman, but seeing as she did not wish to be satisfied by him, he left her alone to take her satisfaction with Julian, among others. How many other men of his situation would have been enlightened enough to do the same?

She honestly mourned him when he died, leaving her a widow at 45, mother of four almost grown children and mistress of the de Stael lands and castle until their eldest son was ready to take over. And seeing as he was his father’s son, he saw no reason to take over from his terrifyingly competent mother until she saw fit to ask him to. Which she did not, for the time being, and nor did she accept any other offer of marriage. One husband had been quite enough.

Why would she give up her freedom, her literary salon, her role as patron of the arts, her musicians in residence? No, Rosalind would stay on as the Countess de Stael, mistress of her own destiny.

The first time she left Julian, she threw one of his own volumes of poetry at his head and told him her then-infant son would shoot him from the high tower if he ever came back. He came back anyway, less than a year later, and of course she took him back. That was the first time she told him she loved him. He dedicated a whole collection of poems to her, veiled in enough metaphor that they could be read in courts across the continent, while adorned with enough intimate detail that those sufficiently educated in poetic convention would know what Rosalind was to him. There were plenty of words for that, some of them more vulgar than poetic, but the one she had always liked best was muse.

It wasn’t an exclusive title, of course. Muse and lover overlapped, and men found it easier to make promises of fidelity than to keep them. The first time Julian had tried to make such an empty promise to her she had put her finger firmly to his lips and said, “Don’t lie to me.”

Being who he was as a person, Julian had just gazed at her in adoration and then sucked her finger into his mouth and the conversation had gone how you might expect. The roles of lover and poet-in-residence also overlapped, and Rosalind had chosen him because he pleased her on both counts. There were only so many hours in the day, after all: if she’d had to find time for both, she would never have got any sleep.

The second time it was him who left her, and he left her for his other muse.

“It’s better if I say you left me, though, isn’t it?” he’d said. He was miserable and restless and he was going to leave whatever she said, so she’d just shrugged and swallowed her hurt. He was the storyteller. He could weave whatever tale he pleased about how she’d thrown him over.

“I don’t mean I’ll make you sound cruel. Just, it makes more sense, for me to be travelling as a bard if you threw me out. I can be broken-hearted and naturally fall in with my old friend Geralt to take my mind off it.”

Rosalind had smiled unkindly. It was some consolation to know he wouldn’t exactly be welcomed with open arms, wherever it was he was going. He’d been living here with her for almost two years, discreetly avoiding Alexander on the stairs, and she would miss his company in her literary salon and in her bed. But she wasn’t broken hearted at their parting and neither was he. He would be performing heartbreak, and the man the performance was aimed at probably wouldn’t even notice.

She’d met the witcher, once. The lord of Corven had hired him and he was there at one of the banquets, scowling and silent as Lord Corven slurred his words and sang a snatch of that song, badly. Julian’s song, only he wasn’t Julian when he sang it, he was Jaskier.

“I believe we have a mutual friend,” she’d said to him. “Julian Pancratz speaks very highly of you.”

Julian didn’t speak much of him at all, because he might not know when to keep his mouth shut but he did know which subjects to keep it shut about, and his other muse was one of them. But the little he did say on the subject of Geralt of Rivia was enough to make his admiration quite clear.

The witcher had just looked confused, like he didn’t even know who Julian was. Rosalind had only been making conversation to show that she wasn’t too proud to talk to a witcher, and if he didn’t want to talk back then she wasn’t going to insist. And that was that. The most fleeting of encounters, where as far as she knew nobody had told him who she was, and if the name Julian didn’t mean anything to him there was no reason he would remember her.

The physical impression he made stayed with her though. Huge, clad in black, a scowl that looked defensive rather than aggressive, and strange golden eyes like the afterglow of gazing at a flame. It felt almost like trespass, to know this other side of Julian, the company he kept when he was out there in the wilds living as Jaskier. She had met a few of his other lovers, but to meet his muse was quite different.

She never did mention it to Julian. There wasn’t anything to tell, really. She only remembered it years later, when he turned up on her doorstep and collapsed.

The Cintran refugees limped in carrying what they could, or in just the clothes they stood up in. Then they carried each other, starving or bleeding or too young or old to walk.

Rosalind opened the courtyard and then the great hall for them. She had the servants clear away most of the tables so they could sleep on the floor, and provided them with soup. Some of them she found work for, one or two she threw out for harassing women, and the rest she just had to hope would creep back home once Nilfgard stood down. Their army was searching for somebody, her scouts told her.

“There’s a girl and an injured man here asking for Jaskier, Milady,” Anna said. Anna had been her housekeeper and now she was the chatelaine, and she always knew exactly what Rosalind needed to know and what she didn’t need to bother her with. “They say they’re friends of his. I thought you might want to see them, since he’s out today?”

Julian had written to her after Alexander died, enclosing a poem. It wasn’t romantic at all, nothing about her black eyes like liquid starlight or anything she’d heard before. If it was about anything she supposed it was about grief, or loneliness. So not the sort of letter that ought to have ended up with him back in her bed, poet in residence and the star of the de Stael literary salon, except that they were both lonely now, and she always had liked him, artistically, personally and physically. Why shouldn’t she take him back if she wanted to?

“Who are they?” she asked, only mildly curious. Julian-as-Jaskier had a lot of friends.

“That’s why I came to tell you - they won’t give their names. The girl speaks like Cintran nobility but she’s trying to hide it, and the man hasn’t said anything. He can barely stand up. There’s something going on and I didn’t want to leave them in with the others without consulting you.”

“Is there enough food, for the rest of them?”

“Yes, they’re serving now. The healer’s out there too, tending the injured.”

“Alright then, send those two up to Julian’s chambers, will you? And when you’re ready we’ll go and see if they’ll tell us who they are.”

The man she recognised right away.

He was dirty and his clothes were ragged, but he still had that overwhelming physical presence she remembered. The witcher, Julian’s other muse from the other half of his life, here in her castle.

The girl leapt to her feet when Anna announced her. She wasn’t very clean either.

“Countess,” she gasped. “We’re looking for Jaskier, he’s – his – my father’s friend, we were hoping he could help us…”

A number of things rang false there. For a start, there was no way the witcher was really that girl’s father. Guardian, protector, bodyguard, maybe. But not her father. Julian was a fountain of knowledge when it came to witchers, and Rosalind knew perfectly well they couldn’t father children. That was his business though.

The part that Rosalind knew less about but which concerned her more was their claim on Julian. He never had told her what happened between the two of them and she hadn’t asked; one muse doesn’t enquire after the trespasses of the other, for fear of being thought to care. She had simply noticed something brittle about him on the rare occasions he sang those old songs now. The White Wolf wasn’t an entirely benevolent muse: good for the artist, perhaps not so good for the man. Julian didn’t make a distinction, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

We had a falling out, was all he’d said, and a falling out between a poet and his muse was a serious business. Not as serious as whatever was going on now, that had washed these two up at her feet, bedraggled and desperate, but still. Poor Julian. A change in life and art both at once.

Rosalind sighed. A sigh that she felt with every one of her 45 years, and then some.

“Let’s not bother with the deceit,” she said, addressing the man. The man. As if she didn’t know his name and exactly who he was. “I know who you are, Geralt of Rivia. I didn’t know you were still in touch with Julian.”

He blinked and shook his head. “I’m not,” he said thickly.

“So what brings you here?”

“We. I need his help. I heard he was here. If he’s not, we’ll move on.”

His voice was like rubble, his jaw clenched. Wounded, trying to hide it – and then he swayed, and the girl turned a terrified face to _her_ as if Rosalind could possibly hold him up if he fell.

“You don’t look well enough to travel,” she said, kindly enough though she wasn’t _feeling_ particularly kindly. “I understand you won’t see the healer, but at least sit down and rest. Eat something. I’ll get Julian for you.”

She was as good as her word. She left them in Julian’s rooms, sent food up and a rider out to fetch Julian from the village. And then she put Anna’s smartest girl in the top tower to watch for whoever might be coming. At best, it would be Julian on horseback, and she would re-join her unexpected guests just a moment before he was shown in. At worst – well, she didn’t know, but at least she would see them coming.

His footsteps on the stairs were light and fast, like those of a much younger man. She knew his tread before she heard his voice.

“But I don’t have any mysterious friends – Rosalind!” he was calling before he was even at the top. “Why is Anna hustling me up the stairs like a child who’s late for dinner? If you’re waiting for me with nothing on I shall forgive her of course, but - ”

He pushed the door open, still talking, and that was when he saw who was waiting for him.

It had been early when he left and she hadn’t seen him today; if she were a more generous person, she might have met him herself and told him his other life was here. If their positions had been reversed, she would have wanted to know, to prepare – hell, to change clothes, look devastating and unobtainable and beloved by somebody else. Julian never had been very good at the unobtainable part, and the rest, perhaps, he had managed without her help. He’d always been good-looking, and now the evening air and the sprint up the stairs left him bright-eyed and flushed, and she felt a rush of pleasure simply at the sight of him.

His feet took three more steps before they caught up to what he was seeing and he stopped, halfway between Rosalind and the witcher.

“Geralt?” he said. There were two octaves in that word. Low then high.

“Jaskier,” breathed the witcher, getting to his feet like it hurt but some higher power was compelling him.

He made it across the room, even, and Julian met him half way, two magnets pulled together. Whatever might have happened before that he never talked about, Julian opened his arms and let the witcher all but collapse into him.

The two of them were of a height but the witcher’s shoulders were much broader, his arms and chest so massive that Julian looked slight, almost childlike, in his embrace. It was the witcher who seemed to be seeking comfort, though, his face hidden in Julian’s shoulder and one hand white-knuckled on the back of his neck. Julian widened his stance and took his weight, rubbing his hand up and down the witcher’s back as if he were soothing an animal.

“Geralt,” he said again, a sigh that held everything. “Geralt, what are you _doing_ here?”

The witcher muttered something she couldn’t hear.

“You what?”

Rosalind heard something that sounded like, “I’m sorry,” and then Julian echoed in disbelief, “You’re _sorry?_ You? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“About – last time. We saw each other. And for coming here. I need your help.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Julian sighed, squeezing him tighter. “Geralt. Only you would turn up after two entire years with a piss poor apology because you need something from me.”

He disentangled himself slightly, raising his head to look the witcher in the face.

“You look _terrible_ – oh, no, are you dying? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re dying, that’s why you’re apologising, because you literally don’t know anybody else who’d take charge of your bad-tempered horse - ” 

“I’m not dying, Jaskier. I just need to – rest. A necrophage bit me. I can’t keep her safe until I’ve recovered. I’ll be gone in two days…”

He swayed alarmingly and for a second Rosalind thought he was going to fall, bring the two of them down under his bulk.

“Woah, steady on there, Geralt -” Julian caught him like he’d been doing it all his life: locked his knees, shoulder under the witcher’s arm. “I’ve got you. It’s alright, of course I’ll help you, you idiot. What’s going on?”

The witcher stood there, leaning heavily on Julian with his eyes closed for a few moments, then pushed upright and forced himself to let go – at least, that was how it looked to Rosalind, like he wanted nothing more than to stay there in Julian’s arms, lean on him and let him take his weight, but wouldn’t give in to the weakness.

“How did you know I was here?” Julian insisted, letting go too.

The witcher didn’t answer, but the girl piped up:

“Yennefer said, your little friend is living with the Countess de Stael, and that he’d have to make it up to you because you helping us was the only plan she had.”

The child was quite old enough and well-bred enough to know she was being indiscreet, and Rosalind turned to her in surprise. Her face was white under the dirt, lower lip trembling. Any moment now she would dissolve into humiliated tears, but before she did she was lashing out at anybody she could reach, a terrified child furious at what she didn’t understand. She hadn’t known what this Yennefer meant by _little friend_ or what needed making up for, only that it was something between adults and she felt foolish for not knowing.

Julian looked sharply at her too, confusion all over his face, and then turned to Rosalind as if she could explain it. She shook her head.

“Wow,” he said. “There’s _a lot_ to unpack there.”

He was trembling too, she saw.

“Julian…” she began, and he turned away from the witcher to pull her into a tight hug before she could say more.

“Hello Rosalind,” he muttered into the top of her head. “Sorry, I wasn’t – I didn’t expect this at all. I never thought I’d - ”

He took a deep breath and released her. She stayed close beside him, her arm still around his waist. It seemed like he needed something to ground him, his gaze flickering from witcher to girl and down to Rosalind. Witcher, girl, Rosalind. Poor Julian, she thought, squeezing him tighter. Torn between his two muses with a rude child as witness.

“Geralt, who is this? What are you doing here?”

The witcher’s jaw clenched.

“It would be safer for the Countess not to know,” he bit out.

“Oh, please. These are my lands and I am responsible for everything that happens here. Ignorance would be no defence.”

“Geralt?” Jaskier prompted.

The witcher’s face got even grimmer, if that was possible.

“She’s my Child of Surprise,” he said. “Nilfgard is searching for her. I have to hide her.”

 _“You’re_ the Lion Cub of Cintra?”

The girl nodded. She was crying silently now, tear tracks clearly visible where they washed away the dirt on her face.

“Princess Cirilla of Cintra,” she said in a wobbly voice, and then stopped. No princess ever had to introduce herself. No princess ever stood in somebody else’s castle in dirty clothes, begging for help from a mere countess, hoping that a poet who used to be friends with a witcher would take pity on her and intercede.

Enough, then. She might as well do something for these people before Nilfgard put her to the sword.

There was supposed to be a concert tonight, in the small hall, and she would still need to find the time to show her face. Another musician could cover for Julian, and then tomorrow the tenant farmers were to show her the flooding by the river, which she couldn’t very well put off, but Julian would be here and Anna could be trusted with whatever they needed -

“Alright, child, alright,” Rosalind said, taking charge. “Enough tears. You’ve had a hard time of it but I can keep you safe here, for a few days at least. Until you’re healed.”

The last she addressed to the witcher. She meant to call him by name, but at the last moment it caught in her throat. A name that tripped off Julian’s tongue so easily, but it was too intimate on hers.

“Julian, will you see to your friend? And I’ll have them prepare a bath and some clean clothes for the princess. Come, Cirilla. You’ll have the old nursery rooms near mine, where nobody will bother you. We shall tell my chatelaine you are Julian’s friend’s daughter, just as you said… Come now.”

She put her arm around Cirilla’s skinny shoulders, gently steering her to the door. Glancing back, Julian mouthed a silent, fervent, “thank you,” at her, before turning back to the witcher.

As the door closed behind her, the distance closed between them and she couldn’t tell if it was another embrace or another collapse. She didn’t stay to find out.

It was very late when Julian tapped on her door, quiet as in the old days when discretion was the order of the day. More out of respect for her husband than any pretence at a fidelity he had never demanded of her – her wise woman had ensured all Rosalind’s children were their father’s, no little pale imposters who looked like Julian in the de Stael bloodline, and that was all Alexander had ever asked for.

“Wasn’t sure you’d still be awake,” he said, leaning in to kiss her where she sat by the fire. He smelled different, of leather and sweat and the wilderness, like he did when he’d been travelling. Like the witcher. “I lost track of time. How was the concert? Who filled in for me?”

“Piotr, and he did it passably well.”

Julian pulled a face and sank into the chair on the other side of the hearth, close enough to touch but they didn’t. He looked tired, like after a performance, all his energy burned out.

“So. How is your witcher?”

Another rueful face. “Well. He’s got himself in quite a mess this time, hasn’t he, if he’s coming to me for help. But he’ll be alright. He’ll sleep and meditate and in two days you’d never know there had been anything wrong with him.”

“And how are you, Julian?”

He managed a faint smile and shook his head. Of course he couldn’t tell her. This wasn’t the story he spun for Rosalind any more. It was the other half of his story, his other muse, all the silences he didn’t fill in her court.

“I have to ask,” she said, making her voice as soft and non-accusatory as possible, “were you – just now – did you bed him?”

He looked up then, face soft with shock. “No! Of course not!”

She shrugged, half an apology but not quite. “You smell like him.”

“I – I hugged him. I sat with him while he bathed, in case he drowned like the fool he is.”

Rosalind nodded.

“And then I did - I lay down next to him for a while. Just lying there, with my arm around him. And when I got up, I thought he was asleep but he, ah, he pulled me back for a second - ” he reached out to give a gentle tug on her wrist, demonstrating. “And he kissed me.”

He changed his grip from her wrist to her hand, squeezing, as he gazed into the fire. Remembering it? A guilty conscience? He was unreadable to her in that moment, in a way he so rarely was. The other half of his life.

“And I let him. I kissed him back, I mean,” finally he met her gaze. “I always do, even when I probably shouldn’t.”

The firelight made his eyes very dark, all the blue burned out. His hand was pale against hers, and Rosalind ran her thumb over his knuckles, tracing the rise and fall of the fine bones under the skin. Musician’s hands. Here, with her, he was mostly known as a poet. With the witcher, he was a bard. He had another name.

“Did you know? That it was like that between us?”

She nodded. “I assumed.”

“Should I have told you? It never seemed relevant, you were never going to meet him, but now…”

“No. No, it was – it’s your other life. You wouldn’t have expected to know how it was with Alexander.”

A flicker of his eyebrows. “ _That’s_ who you compare him to?”

“Well. He’s been there for as long as I’ve known you. Twenty years, it must be? I’ve never had any lovers last that long. Only a husband.”

“And me, almost.”

“And you, Julian. Or are you Jaskier tonight?”

“I can be both. I can be Julian with you and Jaskier with him, can’t I?”

“I don’t know, can you?”

“Of course I can! I’ve done it for twenty years, after all. Well. Except the times you threw me out.”

“If you recall, Julian – or were you being Jaskier when you left me? – it was _you_ who left _me_ , and me throwing you out was just the story you preferred to tell.”

“That was only once! You definitely threw me out the first time!”

The strange tension of his revelation was dissipating in the familiar steps of the disagreement. She had always preferred his version, where she had lovers aplenty and could coldly send them away when she was tired of them. Wouldn’t that have been neat, to draw a line under Julian and take up with the next hot young thing? None of the humiliation of knowing it was him who had left, even if it was sometimes a relief to have him out of her hair for a year or two. Even if he never told anybody.

“Come here,” she chided, pulling him to her.

He slid to his knees on the hearth in front of her chair 

“I meant, bring your chair closer,” she smiled. “But where’s the theatre in that?”

Julian laid his hand on his heart. “Ah, Rosalind, it is balm to my soul to be understood so completely.”

He was already performing, as always, but it wasn’t just talent and practice that made him such a good artist. It was the layer of sincerity that ran under everything he did, the foundation he could build anything on with the simple power of meaning it. Julian knelt before her because it was dramatic and also because it expressed something true, and Rosalind saw no need to pick the two meanings apart.

Rosalind brushed his hair off his forehead and then held him still in front of her. “How will you be both Julian and Jaskier under the same roof? Will you pause on the stairs from his room to mine and transform?”

Julian and Jaskier weren’t so different really, and that made it harder, surely, to keep the story straight. Perhaps he would try anyway.

“Yes, why not?”

“And who will you be when your witcher and I are in the same room?”

“For two days, can’t I be both at once?” he tried. “Geralt heals much faster than you think. And besides, when will you be in a room with him? You’re incredibly busy, all the time – you don’t have time to sit around entertaining old friends of mine.”

“And after the two days are up, what will you do then?”

He blinked up at her almost pleading. He thinks I’m throwing him out, she realised. Am I throwing him out? Plenty of women would: the other great love of his life turns up here and he thinks he can keep both of us?

“I don’t know yet. Depends on _him_.” The look on his face said he really _didn’t_ know and was sharply aware of the humiliation of it. “He’s always glad to see me when I can get him a hot bath and a bed for the night, but after two days the novelty will have worn off and then we’ll see how he really feels. Everybody’s sorry when they need something, aren’t they?”

Rosalind looked at him, all shadow and sharp contrast in the firelight, and she didn’t need anything she didn’t already have, but Rosalind was sorry too. He was going to leave with the witcher, even if he didn’t know it yet.

“Then let’s wait two days and see,” she said. “And in the meantime - you’ve been to _his_ bed already, won’t you come to mine?”

He sketched out a bow right there on his knees, and a charming smile to go with it. “I’ll do whatever you wish, my lady.”

It was just as well, Rosalind thought as he kissed a path up her thigh and made her shiver, that she had never wished for him to be completely and only hers. Because that was one thing Julian would never be able to do, not even if he wanted to.

**Author's Note:**

> My [tumblr pitch](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/post/618578427292893184/in-a-world-where-you-guys-are-writing-true)for this fic was:
> 
> "What if Jaskier’s ex the Countess de Stael is in her mid 40s, and her husband dies, and she’s a wealthy patron of the arts but not just *any* arts only the arts she honestly likes, and now she’s living her best life in complete financial social & sexual freedom and she takes Jaskier back because he got dumped by his other muse and she does actually like him (artistically, socially, physically) so she can afford to be generous, and then one weekend after the fall of Cintra his other muse turns up injured & exhausted with a traumatised teenage girl fleeing from an army of murderous fundamentalists and pretending to be peddlers? pilgrims?
> 
> and she’s like FINE I know who you are and I’m not going to turn you away but I had a CHAMBER CONCERT planned for tonight and a very full day arguing about tithes with her tenant farmers, I’ll get Julian for you (key to this is that Jaskier goes by his ‘real’ name with her) and really this story is about how she manages her very full professional life running a small castle, finds time for the arts & lives a fulfilling creative life, has 3/4 teenage kids AND finds time to keep a lover so like, extremely middle aged concerns, and nobody even fucks!!! Its not that kind of story!!! It’s gonna be the literary fiction of Witcher fanfic and I don’t say that in a good way"
> 
> so i think i've achieved that? success! by very specific & personal criteria! 
> 
> ANYWAY come and hang out on [tumblr](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/) for more thoughts about women in their 40s and also The Witcher.


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